Q2 2022 Review
This is my tenth consecutive quarterly review. It's a reflection on my goals for the second quarter of 2022. I conduct these quarterly reviews to track my progress on my ten year plan, which I published at the end of 2019 and suggest you read to get the most out of this article.
If you want to conduct your own quarterly reviews, here's my free comprehensive guide and my toolkit with templates, trackers, and video instructions.
These quarterly reviews feel like a roller coaster ride. Peaks and valleys. Excellent quarters followed by average ones. This past quarter was more of an average one, and I know exactly why: golf.
I've played golf since high school, but I never took it seriously enough to improve. I wanted to change that this year. My wife and I joined a club, I took a lesson, and I've been practicing my ass off since late February.
In Q2 alone, I played 20 rounds of 18 holes and 17 rounds of nine holes. If you figure an average 18 hole round takes about 4 hours, then I spent 114 hours playing golf in Q2. That doesn't include the time I spent practicing. I hit thousands of balls on the range plus thousands of chips, putts, and bunker shots. I hit balls until I had blisters on my hands. Then I put bandaids on and kept hitting.
All the practice paid off. I started the quarter at a 21.5 handicap. Today I'm sitting at a 13.5.
I started the year with the goal of shooting five rounds in the 80s—during the entire year. On June 30th, I shot my fifth round of the year in the 80s.
I don't think my goal was too easy. I think I just went full psycho mode on golf to the exclusion of most other interests. I drastically exceeded my expectations, and it was a great example of how quickly you can improve at something if you're willing to spend an insane amount of time doing it.
My next golf goals are a single digit handicap and one round in the 70s by the end of the year. These feel like a pretty big stretch, but they're definitely possible.
So all that background story is my explanation for falling short on a lot of my other goals in Q2. I'm not upset about it in the slightest. We go through seasons in life where our focuses change. The pendulum swings from one priority to another, and when that happens, somethings gotta give. Ryan Holiday wrote a great article call Work, Family, Scene: You Can Only Pick Two. The basic idea is that you can't excel at everything. Your time is limited, and when you excel in one area, you'll likely fall down in another.
I fell down with some of my goals this quarter. But I kicked ass when it came to golf, and it was worth it. That said, I still had some cool wins I'll share below.
Let's get into it.
Complete Successes:
These are the goals I nailed.
One investment program analysis.
Last quarter, I mentioned my new investing plan for the year. Every two weeks, I planned to dollar cost average into two mutual funds (VTIAX and VEMAX) and eight equities (SE, MELI, NNI, FLGT, UPST, SPOT, BOMN, and PINS).
I went out a little faster than planned in the first quarter, meaning I bought more of the eight equities than my plan called for. I was seeing the market drop and thought it was a good buying opportunity. Turns out, I was a bit early.
In Q2 I dialed back the equity purchases in favor of accumulating cash. I anticipate returning to my plan at some point in Q3 or Q4 and will probably still hit the overall dollar target I set at the beginning of the year; however, for the time being I feel more comfortable padding my cash position, even if it means opportunity cost in potential gains.
I did stay consistent with the mutual fund purchases, and in early May I added VTSAX back into the mix. The only reason I didn't have VTSAX in the rotation initially is because my VTSAX balance was much larger than VTIAX and VEMAX, and I wanted a more even mix.
I'm generally happy with my execution over the quarter, and I'm most proud of the fact that I haven't sold anything in the downturn. This is another reason I adjusted my strategy to accumulate cash. I never want to be in a position where I need to sell in a down market.
I'm still holding all 26 small cap stocks I mentioned in previous quarterly reviews. I purchased equal dollar amounts of all 26 companies in May 2020, November 2020, and May 2021. Now the plan is to hold through 2025 and see what happens. As of this writing, the "fund" is down about 32% since inception, down from a -6% paper loss as of last quarter, and down from a 128% paper return at its all time high. What a wild ride.
On an interesting note, I track my net worth at the end of every month. At the beginning of the year, I set a goal to increase my net worth by a specific amount by year end. This was a conservative goal based on my estimated income and an 8% return across my investments. As of the end of Q2, my net worth is down by more than my goal number, meaning that I would have to increase my net worth by double my goal number in six months to hit the goal I originally set in January.
Although this is discouraging, I don't care too much because the decrease is through very little fault of my own. I've done a pretty good job of setting a plan and sticking to it, and the rest is outside my control, so I'm not stewing about it. As Morgan Housel says, we have to plan on the plan not going according to plan—another reason why I'm currently diverting more money to cash reserves.
Send 13 newsletters.
This one is pretty straight forward. I sent 13 issues of The Lake Street Journal - one each week. At this point, I've sent 130 consecutive issues of The Lake Street Journal. I haven't missed a Friday in two years. If you're reading this and aren't subscribed, I'd love for you to sign up.
One workout program analysis.
As I mentioned last quarter, I joined CrossFit in February. Four and a half months in, and I think this is the best fitness decision I've ever made.
I'm probably the strongest I've ever been—or very close to it. And my endurance is very good. I wouldn't do well in a longer race like a half marathon right now, but I ran a 5k in April at a 6:44 mile pace. This wasn't my best race ever, but considering I didn't train for it at all, I can't complain.
My current fitness is the best balance of strength, endurance, and mobility I've ever had, and that's entirely attributable to CrossFit.
While CrossFit is responsible for my fitness, I think walking is largely responsible for my good body composition. According to my Garmin, I took 923,638 steps in Q2 or about 10,150 steps per day. If you spend enough time walking, it's almost impossible to get fat. Since I've been walking most of my golf rounds, I've been getting in plenty of steps.
During Q2 I logged 37 CrossFit classes and nine runs for a total of 46 workouts. I basically exercised every other day, and I'm damn near the best shape I've ever been in. I don't have any plans to change my fitness habits in Q3 aside from possibly attending a few more CrossFit classes if my recovery time improves.
Add 200 newsletter subscribers.
I'm happy to report—for the second time ever and second consecutive quarter—that I hit my subscriber goal for the quarter!
I began the quarter with 796 subscribers and ended the quarter with 1,187 subscribers for a total of 391 new subscribers. I beat my goal by 96% and increased my total subscriber count by 49%!
Most of this growth is the result of good luck. At the end of May, Shane Parrish shared one of my articles in his Sunday Brain Food newsletter which has over 400k subscribers. So thank you to Shane, and thank you to all you wonderful people who subscribed to The Lake Street Journal.
As I've mentioned before, growth happens mostly when you get lucky and somebody with a big following shares your work. The prerequisite to this good fortune, of course, is publishing work. I did a pretty good job with consistent publishing in Q1, which resulted in the growth in Q2. As I'll cover below, my publishing in Q2 wasn't consistent, so I can't expect a lot in terms of growth in the near future.
If I can tear myself away from the golf course long enough to consistently publish articles, I'm sure I'll get back on track.
Partial Successes:
These are the goals I didn't quite nail but I didn't strike out on either.
ROMWOD every day.
ROMWOD is a daily stretching routine with video instruction. I highly recommend it.
I missed 29 days this quarter, meaning I stretched on 62 of the 91 days. This was not one of my better performances. This number is down from eight misses in Q1 of this year.
Consistent with prior observations, I tend to miss most of my stretching when I'm traveling. This quarter was no exception. I went on a golf trip to Myrtle Beach, a trip to Nashville with my wife, we visited my in-laws in Connecticut and my parents in New York, and I visited friends in Ohio. Most of my skipped stretching happened on these trips.
Hopefully next quarter will be better.
Publish 8-10 articles.
I published three articles and one quarterly review. This amounted to 4,915 published words.
I'd like to be more consistent with my publishing, but as I've mentioned before, articles published is a lagging measure of time spent reading. The more I read, the more ideas I have to write about. And as you might guess, all the time I spent golfing last quarter didn't leave a ton of time for reading.
Would I like to publish a bunch of articles and play a lot of golf? Of course. But I don't see both of those things happening, and my focus right now is more on golf.
I'll keep reading and writing as much as I can, but I'm not going to be hard on myself if I don't hit my goals.
These are the three articles I published last quarter:
Journal at least twice per week.
I wrote six journal entries for a total of 4,892 words. This is funny because it's almost exactly the same as last quarter.
I didn't follow my plan of writing one entry every weekend, so I'll try again this quarter.
Spend 50 hours reading.
I spent 26 hours and 54 minutes reading in Q2. I finished three books: Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford, Machete Season by Jean Hatzfeld, and The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.
I also spent time reading The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson which I put down after losing interest, as well as Truman by David McCullough and The Four Foundations of Golf by Jon Sherman, both of which I'm still reading.
I read for about nine, seven, and 11 hours in April, May, and June, respectively. Again, falling short on this goal mostly ties back to all the time I spent golfing. It's neither good nor bad. It's simply reality.
I still think 50 hours of reading is a reasonable goal, and I'm going to shoot for it again in Q3.
Spend 20 hours writing.
I only spent five hours and 13 minutes writing in Q2 for a total of 5,723 words.
Two factors contributed here: first, golf. Second, less time reading—because of golf—meant having fewer ideas to write about.
I'm setting the same goal for next quarter. We'll see how it goes.
Failures:
These are the goals I didn't accomplish. They serve as good lessons and points of reflection.
On a positive note, I didn't have any goals this quarter I considered complete failures. I think that's the first time ever in ten quarterly reviews. Some might say I'm setting the bar too low, but I see it as being properly calibrated. I've spent two and a half years figuring out what is important to me and prioritizing the things I want to focus on.
I'm very happy with the outcomes. I'm more fit than ever, I'm publishing work I'm proud of, I'm consistently adding newsletter subscribers, I'm executing a solid financial plan, and most importantly, I'm enjoying my life.
Conclusions:
Just like last quarter, I'm happy with my performance. I could do better in some areas, but I'm doing fantastic in other areas. As a whole, things are right where I want them to be.
And like I said last quarter, it was a boring quarter, but boring is good. Boring means I'm doing what I want to be doing, and I'm doing it consistently.
If you can do boring things consistently, you'll accomplish a lot during your decades on the planet. Invest money every two weeks. Don't skip workouts. Set aside time to read and write regularly. Hit a thousand golf balls on the driving range. Nobody gets excited about these boring actions—but they do get excited about the results these boring actions produce.
So here's to more boring quarters. Consistent actions and small improvements, repeated for decades.
Thanks for reading. I hope this was as helpful to you as it was to me. I'll see you back here next quarter.
If you'd like to set, track, and achieve goals like me, check out this free how-to guide I wrote. I also built templates, trackers, and step by step video instructions you can purchase here. It's a $10 purchase that could change the trajectory of your life.
Q3 2022 Goals:
One workout program analysis.
One investment program analysis.
Send 14 newsletters.
Publish 8-10 articles.
ROMWOD and/or The Ready State every day.
Journal at least twice per week.
Add 200 newsletter subscribers.
Spend 50 hours reading.
Spend 20 hours writing.
Reduce my handicap from 13.5 to 12.
Photo by Ruthson Zimmerman on Unsplash
